President Bush issued a stark warning to Democrats on Tuesday about how to conduct the debate on Iraq as midterm elections approach, declaring that Americans know the difference between “honest critics” and those “who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people.”

Hm. Let’s try that again.

Kent Hovind issued a strong warning to his critics about how to conduct the debate on evolution, declaring that Americans know the difference between “honest critics” and “those who claim that the Earth is billions of years old, that a fossil record exists, and those who deny the Great Flood’s role in creating the Grand Canyon.”

And again?

Bill Clinton issued a strong challenge to his critics about how to conduct the debate over his sex life, declaring the Americans know the difference between “honest critics” and “those who claim that there are not multiple meanings to the word ‘is’, and that oral sex is indeed sex.”

Should I try this one more time? It’s kind of awkward, I admit.

So, Judge Sam Alito, during his college years, was a member of the organization “Concerned Alumni of Princeton” (or so he said on a Reagan-era resume), CAP being an organization famous for its stance in trying to keep the Old Boys Network alive and down on the admission of women and minorities. He is asked about it. He says he doesn’t remember being a part of CAP, but if he was…

“The issue that had rankled me about Princeton for some time was ROTC. I was in ROTC for a time and the unit was expelled from the campus. And I thought that was very wrong.”

Neat. You want to know who he reminds me of?

“When Strom Thurmond ran for President, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have all these problems over all these years, either.”

So, Trent, what do you mean by “all these problems”?

When I think back about Strom Thurmond over the years, what I’ve seen is a man that was for strong national defense and economic development and balanced budgets and opportunity, and that’s the kinds of things that I really had in mind.

I sympathize with Sam Alito and Trent Lott. I joined the KKK because I needed some white bed sheets, and I thought the KKK was mostly just a charitable organization that gave white bed sheets away to those who needed them. Today, I get a lot of heat because of my joining the KKK.

I’m changing some things around on the sidebar a bit. My list under the “Bull and Scones”, a sort of unofficial listing of blogs I find interesting enough to high-light, grew a bit stale. The “Memory Blog”, the blog auxiliary of the Memory Hole collection of documents, was never updated. The Reverend Moon Watch declared itself over, meaning I now dump it over to “Documents” section. I do ask that if he’s no longer watching the whereabouts of Reverend Moon, who is?

So I added a few things to this section. The cadre of Clyde Lewis listeners. For good or ill. Hey! Look! I’m at the bottom of the list. I haven’t heard too much Clyde Lewis, ever since corporate X decided to rip apart the radio station he was on in favour of a generic pod-shuffle stimulation, but he’s bopping around on Internet-streams. “Clyde Lewis makes Art Bell look like Larry King.”

Crooks and Liars is a great blog full of video-tapes from the talking head programs and C-SPAN. A member of Duran Duran helped found this blog. I don’t know what that means, the Duran Duran connection, but it’s a strange bit of trivia that I feel the need to pass on.

Josh Reads, your source for musings on the sex life of Hi and Lois. (And what’s with the shape of Luann’s new cat?)

I quietly enter Jim McCranium, a Democratic blogger from … roughly my old stomping grounds… though he’s from the Land of the Radio-Active Tumbleweeds, or Rick Emerson Country if you will, and I’m from “Mad Cow Country” (or, to spell that out, a town neighboring Mabton, Washington.) This explains the blog’s appeal. It may be affirmative action in giving him the award, as spelled out with “outside of these two urban centers” (Seattle and Portland), but geographic diversity is important. As for the points of comment on his blog: My mother wanted me to register to vote in 1999 or 2000 to defeat a Tim Eyman initiative (she saw the damage it could do to extra-curricular public education services). But Oregon has its own version of Tim Eyman in (name escapes me at the moment), and had a Lon Mabon religious nut to boot, so there’s trouble everywhere.

I’m trying to figure out how to change the stale list of books. To that end, step one is found with this page. Some thoughts on the list of books: #1: Matt Taibbi is a poor man’s Hunter S Thompson for the twenty-first century. The Adams vs. Jefferson is not a particularly good book. #2: The “federalist bloggers” mistake is endemic of the type of problems that confront the book. I imagine that mistake made as the author types out his first draft for the book, and finds this line funny. In re-reading it, he knows the right thing to do is to drop the phrase, but he can’t… let… go. In the parlance of high school essays, when I left in these jokes, the teacher may or may not grade me down, but s/he’d always leave a comment next to my little joke. I suspect that the book that sits next to this one in the library, which I think is entitled “Jefferson vs. Adams”, is a better book that covers the same material. #3: John Dean’s biography of Warren Harding leaves a lot to be desired (it brushes aside the scandals that defined his presidency). I find it amusing that more or less no current listing of presidencies in terms of “greatness” has him last (Buchanan gets the honor these days), but historically Harding had been listed last. Harding’s stock has, evidentally, risen ever-so-slightly. Anyway, Dean’s book on Harding is as haliographic as Harding is ever going to recieve. #4: My “1984” selection, Walter Karp’s somewhat hysterical book on the Reagan administration, mentions Walter Mondale maybe … twice. That seems appropriate for a book on the 1984 presidential election. Actually, for a more traditional slant on the election, Time Magazine (or was it Newsweek) did their every-four years book on the election, where we learned that Reagan’s advisor announced the election over as soon as Mondale selected his running mate. #5: Anyone have suggestions, particularly for years that I do not have here? 1860 seems important to read up on.

Step number 2 is going to be a listing of various other books, with its cover published here (and it’ll be hot links to the image from Amazon). I have a number of items in mind. I know you’re sitting at the edge of your seat, excited by the prospects of seeing them.

Anyway.

Insisting that God “certainly needs to be involved” in the Supreme Court confirmation process, three Christian ministers today blessed the doors of the hearing room where Senate Judiciary Committee members will begin considering the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito on Monday.

Rev. Schenck said he and Rev. Mahoney had blessed the same room before hearings for Chief Justice John Roberts last year. That hearing “went very well,” Rev. Schenck said.

Wait. If they’re “not taking sides”, then how did the the confirmation of John Roberts go “very well”? Or did it “go very well” with no regard to the fact that he was confirmed, and what they liked it because the Lord loves Evasive manuevering as responses, (Try it when you’re at the Pearly Gates!) and indirect questions.

You know, I’m thinking that if Judge Sam Alito is not confirmed, (oh. Wait. God takes no sides. Strike that. IF Judge Sam Alito does not provide charming evasive manuevering, and the Senators do not provide weirdly indirect questions) these Holy Warriors can have voo-doo effigies of the “nay”-ing Senators with pins stuck in, and they can return to the Hearing Room and rub “Holy Feces” into the seats. Actually, I think they had better. Otherwise I have to wonder about their committment to the cause.

From Paul Collins The Trouble With Tom, a Christmas gift from my brother– who gave my dad a different decaying corpse related book — Jeff… Octagon City also cited in Ghost Towns of Kansas (and probably mentioned in Tom Franks’s What’s the Matter with Kansas, too):

Home for All was a hit: the eight-sided panacea was immediately demanded bpy fashionable homebuilders across the country. Henry Ward Beecher built himself an octagonal house; so did P.T. Barnum. Clarence Darrow spent his childhood in one. In many towns, the builders of these homes came from the intersecting group of readers that Fowler’s works had always appealed to: doctors and ministers. Some of the latter wryly claimed that the octagonal form was ideal because they couldn’t be cornered by the devil — and, as was alleged of one minister in upstate New York, “so he could see the Lord coming from any angle.” Imitators upped the ante to twelve- and even sixteen- sided houses.

By the following spring, all traces of Octagon City were gone.

I had suspected that the Jack Abramoff corruption express would afflict the Democratic Party to a smaller scale in the way Enron did, which is my 80-20 rule: 80% to the Republicans, 20% to the Democrats; you buy the Republicans, you rent (key) Democrats. (The corallary is the “What’s the Matter with Delaware?” question: so, um, what are you supposed to do with corporatist Democrats who support something like the Bankruptcy Reform Bill because that’s the money behind their state? And can we call them “Rockefellar Democrats”?) With Enron, a Republican smirks “Hey! Let’s look how much money Enron donated to Clinton!!”, to which I can reply “Why do you think I am lukewarm with Clinton?”

But I was wrong. Abramoff is… a Republican plague, and does not cross beyond that side of the aisle. He is a foot-soldier in the Republican cause, pure and simple. Despite what you have heard, Bryan Dorgan has not received his money. Harry Reid has not received his money. You have to go a few levels removed to connect Abramoff with any Democrats — Democrats with large Native American constituencies have received money from… Native American groups.

Which means that when Abramoff gives the number 60:

A onetime chairman of College Republicans — a close ally of such party luminaries as Tom DeLay, Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist — Mr. Abramoff says he has information that could implicate 60 lawmakers.

It is… 60 … Republicans. That may be on the high side, but then again. It may not be.

And I invite you to look over E.J. Dionne’s litany of Abramoff quotes, found here.

Bryan Dorgan, for his part, issued forth this statement:

Senator John McCain and I have worked for more than a year to expose the corruption of Jack Abramoff. Today’s announcement by the Justice Department that it has secured a guilty plea from Jack Abramoff confirms much of the work that we have done and much of what we have found.

I welcome today’s development because it provides some justice to the Indian tribes that Jack Abramoff defrauded of tens of millions of dollars.

That’s pretty cool. A Senate over-sight committee exposes corruption. Now I wonder… seeing as Abramoff has had as much, if not more so, a corrosive effect in the House, and seeing how Tom DeLay has now officially called it quits (to become a lobbyist, perhaps?… sigh, and groan) for the good of the Republic and the good of the Republicans’ efforts in 2006, let me roll on over to a dumb repetitive running political joke I’ve been working on: does the head of the House Ethics Committe have a similar patting of the back to make? Let’s consult his government website.

I hear crickets chirping. I see tumbleweeds rolling by. (This being the district Hanford sits in, they’re radioactive tumbleweeds.)

I also see that he has donated some old campaign funds to charity. It’s a charitable season all of a sudden in Washington, DC.

You know who David John Oates is, don’t you, and what his stock in trade is, don’t you?

You take a recording, play it backwords, look for jibber-jabbers, slow down the jibber-jabebrs, and you get mechanical speaking of what the speaker is “really saying”.

It’s the old backward masking trick. You see… Judas Priest really was calling that listener to commit suicide, meaning that is inherent in what he was thinking when he was singing that… god… awful… song.

“DO IT!” was the message. The court decided it was retarded, and yet… there was that teenage boy who… did it. What are we to do?

Okay. Perhaps you go to Britney Spears, who apparently has no duplicity when she sings. See?: See me, I’m not too young. Which is what she was was pretty much singing forward, right? (Please note: this is the first and last time I will ever post Britney Spears singing anything.)

I dare you have heard those words sang without me (or anyone else) haven given it away to you, though?

But what? Am I to believe that Bush was thinking when he was “selling” his Energy Plan It sells the scam they know? That Bush was thinking when mentioning how the Senate has helped him, he’s thinking Seante — they’re all first year losers?

Well, that last one. Um. I’ve always been bemused how Bush refers to the legislator’s job as one of rubber-stamping what he wants to do. Today, we have a class of pundits who are pining for the Imperial Presidency of Richard Nixon, and the powers that were lost after he was pushed out of office (those powers being the ones that Nixon grabbed for hisownself.)

Or that Colin Powell went before the UN Assembly to make the Case, and we have (how convenient for the basic storyline): “But its a scam” and (ahem, ahem, ahem) “Forgive me.”

That George W Bush and Al Gore both kept thinking about how big failures they were throughout the 2000 election? (See here.: Bush: “I know you’re blowing it / You’re losing.”. Gore: “Yeah, when its finished, console me / I don’t know. I was wimp.”)

Oh. Wait. Clinton. Er. Yes? : Here is Bill Clinton being asked a question in the Clinton/Dole debate about how he avoids being unduly influenced, Forwards he replies, “I try to articulate my position as clearly as possible.” Backwards he says, “She’s a fun girl to kiss.”

Yes, dear skeptics, David John Oates was running the late-night kook circuit with that before the shit hit the fan. (Oh. Here’s the shit, by the way.)

Actually, the big log that stops me from being a true believer is that, according to David John Oates’s reverse masking, I am to believe that Bob Dole and John Kerry are both — more or less– decent, honorable, and respectable men.

Okay. NOW we have gone over the deep end into the realm of complete kookiness!